


The Architect's Treason

by Tel



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beta Colony, M/M, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-12
Updated: 2010-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-12 14:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lord Dono betrayed his Emperor to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Architect's Treason

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Измена архитектора](https://archiveofourown.org/works/126227) by [jetta_e_rus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetta_e_rus/pseuds/jetta_e_rus), [Tel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/pseuds/Tel)



> Written for the Autumn 2010 Vorkosigan Saga Russian-language ficathon. Prompt: АУ. После прихода к власти Эзара Юрия отправили в изгнание, и Доно последовал за ним  
> Thanks to Philomytha for beta-reading.
> 
> (And might not they have had a thing going on, between the evil empire-running and the evil architecture?)

_The Emperor was first to look up as the broad doors of the dining room at Mazeras swung open, and the first to reach for a weapon. Perhaps his failing eyes only marked the Vorbarra uniforms, for he relaxed as his chief armsman and a knot of men entered the room. His lips thinned at the presumption, but Dono did not see awareness in them. He, who saw betrayal everywhere, did not yet know himself betrayed._

Dono looked down, not wanting to watch as the Emperor barked a command at his men and was instead seized and slammed against the wall. More armsmen swept into the room - more than twenty. The Prince's men were here as well.

How had it been this easy? Mad tyranny vanquished in a moment. His hands shook. He had done this. He was not the first to betray the Emperor, but he had been the last, because the Emperor who trusted no-one had trusted him.

Xav himself stood in the doorway now, lean and grey. Yuri spat and hissed, too furious for words, too angry to know fear.

"And here we are, Yuri," Xav said quietly. His boots clicked on the floor, and his uniform was black for mourning. The Emperor watched him balefully, not sparing a glance for anyone else.

"You," he snarled. "They will draw your entrails from your flesh with hooks, bastard, and strangle you with them."

"It's over," the Prince said. "We have the capital, we have the Counts, and we have you. Ezar gave your torturers to Negri, by the way. I doubt they'll last the week."

Yuri's voice rose, nearly a shriek. "Worthless dog! Kill him!"

His armsmen stood stonefaced. Dono blinked at this, suddenly realizing how small and pitiful the Emperor was without men who would obey him.

"He's promised you to Piotr," Xav added, approaching with slow, lazy strides. "They'll make a game of it."

The Emperor sneered. "As if I'm afraid of your vicious little son-in-law and his boy. I was in the woods when they were children. I won this planet from the enemy. Ezar? If Vorkosigan hadn't claimed him... pah. I knew you all were traitors."

Xav was still. "Sire, you made us so."

They stared at each other a moment. "You haven't the balls to kill me," Yuri breathed.

"Try me," Xav snarled, hand going to his long knife. The Emperor's chief armsman interposed himself, and the Prince stepped back, closing his eyes for a long moment to center his thoughts.

Yuri laughed, a soft, derisive gurgle. "Dissension in the ranks?

"I gave Lord Dono and your armsmen my name's oath to spare your life," Xav said. "My wife asked it of me, and after what you have taken from her I can deny her nothing."

"So?" The Emperor looked contemptuous.

"So I'm smuggling you off-planet."

Yuri blinked. "What?"

"Have fun in Betan therapy."

"...-What-!?"

==Six years later==

It had taken him an long time to get the authorization for offworld travel, and almost as long once he got here for the Betans to stop stonewalling and admit Yuri was here. Still alive, after all these years, despite all Negri's efforts.

He hadn't seen the sun in days, but the underground architecture was always interesting, at times innovative, and constructed with first-class materials. He'd seen a crew of girls working on pipes below the street, exposing to view utility infrastructure that counted as a work of art. Even on dry, dessicated Beta they had emergency drains, and a pumping system to clear the halls of water in case of catastrophe. Who built like that? It was an amazing, glorious world.

Needed more murder-holes, though.

He checked the map the Betan liaison had given him and stopped at a nondescript metal door. This was it? It didn't even have a number on it, merely a small plaque that read **Vadim A. Halidullin Home for Irrelevant Dictators**.

He knocked. A red light blinked as he touched the door, he heard the hum of a security scanner, and then the door opened to a small front office with a desk. There was no-one behind it, just text on a computer screen asking him for his name and the reason for his visit. He cleared his throat and announced himself - the screen went blank.

Nervously, he took a seat, They didn't have magazines, just a magazine reader. He chose one from the computerized list at random and found it had rather more naked people than he'd expected. He poked around a little more and found an architectural digest, which happily occupied him for several minutes.

He almost didn't notice when the thick metal door slid open, revealing a small, dark woman. She smiled at him. "Hello, Mr. Vorrutyer. I'm Rhonda, Mr. Vorbarra's chief therapist. If you could come this way, please?"

The inside was as lush as the entry was spartan. "This is all very nice," he said, surprised. "I have to admit I was expecting more of a dungeon."

"Oh, no," Rhonda said, "that's not the point. This is a rehabilitative facility. Former dictators can add a great deal to our understanding of history and current events, help solve unsolved crimes, and are always a treasure trove of useful information. Mostly we do work with war criminals, but you know, a number of folk have come here voluntarily. We've negotiated several abdications with reigning dictators. They get a safe retirement for themselves and their dependents and we get to make sure they'll never be a danger to the public again."

Dono thought about that, stomach dropping. "What have you done to him?"

"I can't discuss specific details of my client's medical history with you, but we've made great progress..."

They walked into a wide garden gallery, with light pouring in through a skylight. Statues lined the walls, mismatching, maybe rescued from various monumental plazas. A grey-haired man looked up from the book he was reading and smiled, standing up to greet them. He stretched out a hand. Dono dropped to his knees.

"Oh, Dono," Yuri said. Dono kept his head down, felt Yuri's hand on his shoulder. "Please sit down. That's really not necessary."

He awkwardly got to his feet, avoiding Yuri's gaze, and sat. The former Emperor looked at him across the table and took a deep breath.

"I am most sincerely sorry about the time I had your wife killed because she was distracting you from the ImpSec blueprints," he mentioned.

Dono shrugged uncomfortably. "It's nothing."

"And also the time I tied you naked to the stadium flagpole to make a point about construction delays."

"Sometimes you have to kill a few subcontractors. I was slack."

"And the time I asked you to put fifty-three bodies in the concrete at Shikani Dam."

Dono's brows dropped in remembered annoyance."I should hope so! That was rather a lot on short notice. It cost us three weeks of work to recheck the engineering tolerances."

Yuri pursed his lips. "And the time I asked you to build a multi-megaton nuclear bomb into the foundation of the Ministry for Political Education and put it on a ten-year timer."

"Yuri's been rather worried about that," Rhonda put in, "but I can hardly see that any rational person would let it go off, and we don't let our clients contact their successor governments."

"I wouldn't have asked him to do it if I didn't think he'd follow through, Rhonda," Yuri said reasonably.

Dono squirmed. "I told Grishnov the password to reset it - you know, the new guy. I assume he took care of it."

"Oh." Yuri's eyes went distant. "I suppose it's for the best."

"I came to ask your forgiveness, Sire, not the other way around," Dono said quietly. "My grandfather always said that as an architect, I had no honor. I can't help but think I proved him right."

The Emperor-in-exile gave him a kindly smile. "It's all right." Putting his book down, he stood. "Rhonda says I should go out today, show you Beta Colony. Be a proper host. I haven't had any visitors, before."

The therapist bit her lip. "We do have some security precautions. It doesn't do to stand out too much in crowds." She looked critically at Dono's black, conservatively cut formal outfit. "You're... dressed a little more severely than I was expecting."

Yuri nodded, shedding his own plain black jacket to reveal a gauzy pink undershirt embroidered with tiny glass beads. He snapped his fingers. "I can fix that." The former Emperor disappeared through a door, returning with a black, metal-studded leather vest and a jar in a mesh bag. Dono reached out an arm to shrug on the vest, but stopped as he felt Yuri's hand in his hair. He reached up to investigate and blinked.

"Glitter?"

"Glitter is _in_!"

Dono would never dream of contradicting his Emperor.

Soon, they were all fully assembled, Yuri in his see-through pink shirt, and tight pinstripe pants, Dono in his studded vest with glittery hair and a little facepaint. The former Emperor's ensemble would probably have looked better on a younger man, but for a man in his sixties, Yuri looked good. He'd lost weight, and the Betans had straightened his teeth and fixed the overbite.

Dono felt positively transgressive stepping out into the hall, but there was no-one around. No guards, either. He glanced around nervously. "Will this really disguise us from assassins?"

"Well, there aren't any assassins out in the _city_ ," Rhonda said. "That's what the Jane P. Marlowe Home for Failed Assassins is for." She pointed across the metal hallway to another discreet door. "Most of them are all tangled up in revenge fantasies, poor dears. We sort them out and eventually send them home. I'm mostly worried about the paparazzi."

"Really!" Yuri said. "What do you do with the successful assassins?

She dimpled. "This is Beta Colony. We don't let that sort of thing happen around here."

"I think Negri might have had a man trailing me," Dono said slowly, "but I didn't see him today."

"Oh, yes, we found another Barrayaran sniffing around and picked him up," Rhonda said.

"Another one?" Dono asked. "How many have there been?"

"This Negri fellow of yours is very persistent." She glanced at Yuri. "Maybe we should set up a home for secret police chiefs. I'll suggest it to my supervisor."

Yuri just smiled, then looked thoughtful. "Are you sure you'll be safe if you go home, Lord Dono?"

"I don't think anyone cares about me," Dono sighed.

Yuri patted his shoulder. "That's not true. Let's get some lunch."

It was less of a shock than Dono expected when they emerged from the secure warren out into the city. He kept expecting to be ambushed by a cobblestone-wielding lower-class mob, but it seemed like Beta kept its lower classes firmly out of sight. He did seem to be getting a number of appreciative glances from young women and men as they passed, which confused him a little until he glanced in a reflective store window and realized Yuri had left a glittery silver handprint on his butt. He looked sideways at Yuri and got a tiny smile in return.

Then the former Emperor strode ahead like he owned the world, and Dono made himself square his shoulders and soldier on. It wasn't like he was being laughed at - the Betans apparently all thought he was very avant-garde.

"This is so strange," he whispered.

"No, it's not," Rhonda said. "It's the way things ought to be."

"Do you like it?" Yuri asked in an odd tone.

"It's so very bizarre. Hardly a thought of defense anywhere. I'd love to talk to the city planner. See, if I'd planned that street, with all that ceiling space to work with, I'd have put in a recessed autocannon emplacement..."

Yuri glanced at Rhonda, who gave him an encouraging nod. "I was wondering if you might consider staying here." His baritone dropped to a soft purr. "I have much more that I need to apologize for."

Dono shivered. It was the voice that did it. Fragments of the past flashed through his brain - him on his knees in a dank room, an armsman behind him - hanging from the ceiling by one foot and writhing under the Emperor's ministrations - the scorching pain of the hot iron brand burning into his right buttock, just where the handprint was now. A tingle ran through his whole body - as ever, one of sharp anticipation.

"Is there a home for architects on Beta Colony?" he asked Rhonda shyly.

Yuri's arm slid around his waist. "We can make one."

 _...and they all lived happily ever after._

==The End==


End file.
